Many situations include providing balloons for people. Examples of such situations include parties, fairs, promotional activities and the like. Often, a multiplicity of balloons must be inflated and sealed. This is often a difficult task, especially if speed is required as is often the case in a situation where a great number of inflated balloons are to be provided.
The situation involving inflating and sealing a multiplicity of balloons generally requires use of a tank of pressurized gas. Each balloon is placed over an exhaust nozzle of the tank, a valve opened, the balloon inflated to a desired size and the valve closed. Once inflated, the balloon must be sealed. This generally is carried out by tying a neck portion of the balloon.
Tying an inflated balloon requires some manual dexterity, and there is a limit to how fast such an operation can be carried out. This is especially true of the balloon neck is not supported in some manner during the tying process as the operator must supply the support during the neck tying process.
Accordingly, the art contains several systems for inflating and sealing off balloons. However, these known systems are often cumbersome, expensive and difficult to use. Still further, many such known systems are not entirely and efficiently amenable to use on a tank of pressurized gas. Furthermore, many of these known systems are fragile.
Often, balloons are sealed off and a ribbon is then attached to the balloon. The ribbon can be decoration in and of itself or it can serve to attach the balloon to another element, such as a greeting card or the like.
Attaching a ribbon to an inflated balloon adds yet another difficultly to the above-discussed problems.
While the art does contain systems for sealing an inflated balloon and attaching a ribbon to such sealed balloon, these known systems are often cumbersome, fragile, difficult to use and are not amenable to use in a variety of situations. This makes such known systems inefficient.
Still further, many of these known systems; are not amenable to packaging with ribbon to be sold as a kit. Therefore, their use is somewhat limited.
Still further, if a prior art system supports a spool of ribbon, that ribbon is often supported in a position that is not as stable as it could be. Ribbon is often being pulled off a spool in a manner that may pull the spool off the support. If a spool of ribbon is pulled off its support, the overall process is slowed down, or the ribbon may be damaged or soiled, all of which are wasteful.
Still further, many known systems are designed for use by a right-handed person and are very difficult, if not impossible, for a left-handed person to use. In order to be most efficient, such a system should be amenable to efficient use by either a right-handed person or a left-handed person.
Furthermore, pressurized gas can be sold in a wide variety of containers having various sizes and shapes. Many known systems can only be efficiently used with large cylindrical tanks. This limits the number of situations in which these known systems can be efficiently used.
Therefore, there is a need for a unit which can be efficiently used to externally seal an inflated balloon that is easy to use by either hand, is amendable to a wide variety of applications and can be packaged with ribbon.